Now comes the Guardian op-ed on AKP and Tayyip Erdoğan. Losing foreign friends one by one…

Six months ago, an odd falling out occurred between Turkey‘s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan ? who is standing for re-election next Sunday ? and one of his allies in the country’s media, Ahmet Altan, editor of the newspaper Taraf.

Peculiar because Altan, via his paper’s pages, has produced a steady stream of alarming stories that had handily bolstered Erdogan’s view of the threat posed to his government by some members of Turkey’s coup-prone military…………….

Turkey is located between Europe and the oil rich countries of the Middle East and the former Soviet Republics around the Caspian Sea. The country is surrounded by important oil producing basins and its territory is cut by a large network of oil and gas pipelines that supply Europe. She is an important ally for the western world and is the new ?energy bridge? between the west and oil producing countries. Turkey has very good relations with her neighbors and shares historical, cultural and religious ties with them.